Prince of Persia  (Needs Easyflash)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________

It took the developer, ‘Mr Sid‘ two years of work on and off to painstakingly reverse engineer the original Apple II version over to the C64 and the result is quite spectacular.

For those who have been commuting to work from under a rock for the last twenty years, Prince of Persia (PoP) is about a young man’s quest to escape the dungeon he has been imprisoned in and rescue the Princess from the evil Jaffar, who will kill her if she doesn’t marry him within the hour. The franchise was revived for a new generation with a series of games and even a Hollywood movie which were more in the mould of the Assassin’s Creed series that had begun a year earlier, but it’s the original that has retained the hearts and minds of a generation of gamers.

you can’t help but admire the technical achievement in getting it to run perfectly on the bulky old breadbin that is the C64. It has retained the incredible fluidity of movement that is the hallmark of PoP and foreshadowed what was to come with games like Another World and Flashback.

Because the game successfully retains all the features of the original, there is little to say that someone who has experienced the game won’t know. You’ve got to run through a dozen or so levels avoiding traps, opening doors via pressure plates and avoiding or fighting guards until you reach the room where your Princess is being held captive after a showdown with Jaffar.

The 60 minute deadline creates a tension that runs throughout the game. I'm not sure modern games could use the same technique given the demands for lengthy campaigns.

However, it should be noted that if you want to play this on an actual C64 you’ll need to get yourself some extra hardware, specifically an EasyFlash cartridge (not to mention all the usual accoutrements to get C64 games off your PC and onto your C64). This provides the extra necessary memory for the game to successfully play.

Think of it as turning a C64 into a C320 (256k bonus RAM + original 64k) or a C1MB (It’s got 1MB of flash memory). I’m not sure exactly how much extra RAM the EasyFlash cart provides and in what form, but it’s more than the original 64k on your basic bread(bin) and butter C64. Either way if you play the game on an emulator such as VICE it’ll have the EasyFlash option built in so it can easily be played that way.

The use of extra memory on top of the standard 64k of RAM shouldn’t detract from the phenomenal achievement in porting PoP over so perfectly. Nonetheless this isn’t something that would have been commercially viable for the C64 back in the day, as RAM expansions like the REU were pretty rare and not sold in enough numbers to justify producing much commercial software that needed them.

The animation is great but simply couldn't be squeezed into 64K of RAM. Thankfully the EasyFlash cartridge provides more than enough to cram it all in.

That’s not to say that PoP couldn’t have been done in one form or another for the C64 but I’d argue it’s a blessing in disguise that it didn’t happen. Corners would have been cut and the game would have suffered. There are more than enough terrible conversions of games on the old systems without PoP adding to it.

I’ve often wondered about the sort of games you could produce on dead systems, whether Speccy or C64, Mega Drive or Dreamcast, if money were no object and you could just pay someone to develop a game that really pushed the system to it’s very limits either within existing memory constraints or if memory were no object.

Thanks to Mr. Sid we can see that on the C64 the results are pretty spectacular. Of course by the time such memory expansions existed on the C64 in the 1980s alternative systems such as the Amiga and Atari ST could provide that memory and a whole lot more as standard and often at not much more cost. But it’s nice to see the C64 pushed to it’s limits so long after it stopped being commercially viable.

---

The well known game Prince of Persia (the follow up to Karateka, 1984) by Jordan Mechner was converted for the C64 by Andreas Varga (aka Mr. SID) and published on 16 October 2011. It is based on the original Apple II code from 1989. Same as with the forerunner, the exact animation of the characters movement catches the eye, but this was the first time that human movements were displayed rather realistically with the help of rotoscoping. This game runs on a real C64/128 only with the help of the EasyFlash cartridge.

The story could be from the "Arabian Nights": The Shah is far from his own palace in the war. During his absence, the power goes to the perfidious vizier Jaffar's head. He tyrannises his people and tries to seize the throne. He captures the lovely daughter of the sultan and gives her 60 minutes time - either she marries him or she will die. The only hope left for her is, that her true love, an adventurer from a far country, will rescue her. But he got already locked in the deep, dark dungeon of the palace. For he may rot there forever...

Now you start in the role of the future (hopefully...) prince in the dungeon and have 60 minutes real time to work your way in the palace through dangers, traps and guards, collect items, fight against the vizier, defeat him and finally embosom the princess. This is not easy, as some obstacles and combinations of obstacles are hard to take. Interesting surprises await thereby the future prince or respectively the player!
The C64 conversion comprises all 13 levels.

---

Design

The conversion is successful. The game speed is high, the controls precise and easy to learn. Graphics and sound also give a good impression. During the game there is no background music. The used sound effects as the moving noises, the important opening and closing sounds of the gratings, fighting noises or the sounds when traps appear are enough to underline the game and to create tension. If the aim of a level is reached, the screen flickers and a short oriental music sequence is played.

The animated characters are a bit pixellated, but appear very smooth due to the good animation. The graphics gets a 3D -view due to its type of display. The seldom appearing "stuttering" on the C64 was further reduced at the C128 by using the 2,04 MHz storage cycle. Also, there are animated intermediate sequences underlined with music, that continue the story. These relieve the stress of the game and reduce the tension the has been built during playing. The manual is integrated in the game and can be chosen at the beginning by a menu. The score can be saved from level 3 on the EasyFlash cartridge.

Hints

The movement of the prince is normally very fast. In some situations it is necessary to act slower. By pressing the fire button at the same time with the keys for the movement this was made possible. Furthermore one can pick up items or drink from them, hold onto ridges and let oneself fall down slower with the fire button.

Search everything on the screen. There are amongst others also loose boards which you can make fall down by jumping around.Furthermore there are switching boards to open and close gratings and doors.
In some situations you have to slip quickly through the iron gates. Try this also with narrow passages!
At the start of the game you have 3 power points. You lose one point by falling too deep (2 storeys), by boards that fall on you and by a hit in a fight.

Red energy potion: 1 power point
Big red energy potion: all power points reloaded plus 1 additional power point. It makes sense to collect many big energy drinks, as the fights need more power and the difficulties get greater in the higher levels!

Big green potion: floating drink

Blue potion: poison - 1 power point less

Traps and also some fighters get only active when you get close to them!
Traps or also guards (outside the fighting mode), as well as falls over 3 storeys can kill you directly. If you die within the real playing time, you restart the current level anew.
But you need to press the fire button within 20 seconds after the death to repeat the current level, or else the game is ended and you go back to the title screen.

Keys:
RUN/STOP  	= pause
CTRL + R  	= end game and back to title screen
CTRL + A  	= level restart for desperate situations
CTRL + S  	= switch sound on / off
CTRL + M  	= switch music on / off
CTRL + G  	= You can save the current game starting from level 3 on the EasyFlash.
CTRL + L  	= loads a saved game (during the title sequence).
SPACE  	= shows the lapsed game time

Solution

Level 1: Search the sword (left side of the dungeon) and leave the dungeon on the right side. Before that you have to fight against 1 guard!
Level 2: Use the exit on the right side. Here you have to fight more and therefore there are more energy potions to fill up the life display. 1 extra life.
Level 3: At first open the iron gate at the upper left and then slip quickly through the gate (left). Save point. Defeat the indestructible fighting skeleton. The entrance is at the left. 1 extra life.
Level 4:
Level 5:
Level 6:
Level 7: Hold on tight at the start of the level and then reach the floating potion, the be able to reach the lower exit door of the level.
Level 8:
Level 9:
Level 10:
Level 11:
Level 12:
Level 13: Fight against Jaffar
Level 14: End level with ending sequence

There are key combinations for jumping a level and refilling the power points... ×

---

Critics

Jodigi: "If is fun to play the C64 conversion. Concerning the strategy it is as tricky and finicky as the one on the PC".

H.T.W: "What a year for me!! Knight 'n' Grail, Jim Slim and now also Prince of Persia, Mr Sid has whipped up one of the most ingenious conversions for the C64!
You mostly wander about in deep dark vaults with their floors and passages consisting of platforms and fragile wall panels, for which you need a filed jumping technique to cross them. But not only the simple Jump'n'Run fascinates, but even more the climbing passages that our agile prince has to master and the possibility to open and close different dungeon doors with the help of hidden pushable boards. The appendant labyrinth-like level system which is well thought-through can exasperate you, without maps the princess will probably wait in vain for her liberator. Also various potions, that enhance your health but also sometimes turn out to be poisonous, can be found. After you have found the sword, you have to save your skin with the classic fencing style. The single levels need to be crossed fast, as our hero has only 60 real minutes time. The many mean traps in the shape of darting spearheads, razor-sharp iron panels or also loose brickwork that crumbles away below your feet, provide a high difficulty level. Nevertheless, you will go about the levels again and again and master them afters some practice. 
Finally, it can be said that the conversion has lost nothing of the flair of the original by John Mechner and can be described as overall well-done. Absolutely recommendable, from me the full points!

Colt: "One of my favourite games from back then[tm] on my favourite computer from back then[tm], finally, after all those years! Looks good, sounds good and plays fantastic, an "official" version could have hardly been better. At least 10 points, alone for the fact, that somebody has not only started this huge project in his free time, but also finished it."

---

Miscellaneous

According to Jordan Mechner, there was never an official C64 version created, as no software company was interested in a C64 version in 1989 (when he programmed the Apple II version), because the system was seen as too old. But this could have only looked like it from the US American view, as the C64 had not reached the same level of importance in the USA as in Europe. Because in Europe the game was published also for several 8-bit home computers and consoles such as Amstrad/Schneider CPC, Nintendo Game Boy and NES, SEGA Game Gear, Master System, ZX Spectrum and SAM Coupé. But all these machines never reached the same diffusion rate as the C64.


http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/11/27/the-homebrew-review-prince-of-persia-on-the-commodore-64/
http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Prince_of_Persia
